A Spitfire Pilot. Part 9.
Hawarden, 57 Spitfire OTU – July 1941
We were given a weeks leave and went home to await the telegram, sending us off to the OTU. At that time Derek and Kay had a flat at 45 Gunterstone Road, West Kensington, which is, as you probably know, just behind the block of flats where you stayed when you were with IBM. We spent most of the time popping up and down to Town. Jack Ranger and I would meet Derek and Kay, do a round of the pubs, and either stay at Dereks’ or wander back home. Eventually, my telegram arrived, so I phoned them up to find out whether they had received telegrams. Derek was going to be an instructor anyway, but we thought we’d more or less go at the same time. But when I spoke to Jack Ranger and told him I was going to Hawarden, he said
“They were flying Spitfires up there, my brother was up there.”
I said they can’t be because we were supposed to be going on night-fighters, and they were Day. Anyway, I got my gear together and Mum (Connie R********, nee F*****) came and saw me off at Kings Cross and I said cheerio and away I went.
When I got to Hawarden I found that there was only about half a dozen of us who had come off Oxfords and the remainder had all been flying Masters, so they naturally had quite an advantage over us. We had to do a transfer course so that we could get some idea of a single-engined aircraft and the three instructors we had were Flying Officer Mitchell, Flight Lieutenant Freeborn and Flight Lieutenant Watkins. Freeborne was an ex-74 Sqn pilot, had a DFC and bar. Watkins was known as Derby Watkins and he was a great character, and he was the one who sent me off on solo. I did three hours and ten minutes dual on the Master and four hours and ten minutes solo and then on August 1st 1941 I was put in a Spitfire.
In those days there was no dual instruction on a Spitfire, it was all theory until we were told to get in and fly the thing. We had a Spitfire jacked up in a hangar, and this was wired-up in such a way that you could operate the flaps, the undercarriage and naturally, the ailerons and tail. We also did hours under the trainer which was used at BFTS (Basic Flying Training School) and SFTS (Spitfire Flying Training School). It’s difficult to explain what it was like to have my first flight in the Spitfire, because in all the other aircraft we’d flown, we’d always had an instructor with us to begin with until we were fully competent or near enough so. He would then get out and leave you to fly the aircraft yourself. With a Spitfire, you had all the theoretical knowledge, then you climbed in and the Flight Commander would lean over the cockpit and just give you a few last minute instructions, wish you good luck, and send you on your way. Now as you know, when a Spitfire is taxiing, you can’t see a thing over the front, because the engine is sticking up, so you had to taxi from side to side, waggling the tail, going along in a corkscrew sort of motion. While you’re doing this, and making sure you don’t hit anything, all sorts of things run through your mind. Like, having got so far, can you manage the Spitfire? And will you eventually come out at the end of the course alright?
Anyway, I managed to get to the end of the runway without hitting anything and having spied out the land and made sure no one was going to land on top of me, turned into wind, opened up and away I went. Now that is really some sensation. To begin with, in the old type Spitfire, you had a pump undercart, which meant that you selected “UP” when the wings lifted and you had sufficient flying speed, you then pushed the throttle fully forward, take your hand off the throttle and put it on the stick and with your right hand you’d pump like mad on the lever…….
End of tape 1.
Now on all the other aircraft I’ve flown, by the time you’d got the wheels up and were trundling along, you looked over your left shoulder and there was the aerodrome tucked in behind you. By the time I’d got the wheels up and got the rest of the cockpit check done and trimmed the aircraft, I looked round to find out where I was, I was half way to Rhyll! I made a very gentle turn and came back to the circuit, did the usual checks, undercarriage, mixture, flaps, brought it along to the upwind position and came in to land. I wouldn’t say it was the best landing I’ve ever done, but apart from a couple of bumps, I managed to bring the aircraft down and taxi back to the dispersal.
Having got the initial solo over it was merely a matter of getting as many hours in as you possibly could. We flew once or twice a day, for an hour, hour and a half each time, and began to find that the Spitfire was probably the most beautiful aircraft in the world.
It was a delight to fly, when you got to know it. It was very easy to fly and very quick on the controls. We’d do cine-gun firing, air-to-air, air-to-ground. The last bit was comical. We had a ground target not far from Rhyll, on the coast. Most of us missed the target and scared the living daylights out of the people in Rhyll, I think.
At this time we had another instructor posted to us, a Czech sergeant by the name of Sukor who I found out afterwards came from 72 Sqn., which didn’t mean a lot to me at the time. Anyway, Sukor would take us up and do formation flying and tail-chasing and so on, and we’d do our best to hang on to him, which was more than difficult, but whatever happened, we had to stay with him. And always, after whatever exercise he’d taken us on, he’d come down over the aerodrome at nought feet and belt along the perimeter track, climb up and do a roll off the top and we were supposed to try and follow him. One day he came in so low he nearly took the paint off the Group Captains’ aircraft, so that was all stopped.
After we’d done about ten or fifteen hours on Spits, we all felt as though we were budding aces, but I was brought down to earth with a bump in more ways than one. I’d been up doing formation flying earlier in the morning, came back and landed and the aircraft started to wander off to the right, as I landed. Now having got used to the Spit, where you scarcely touch anything and it whips around all over the place, I didn’t realise at the time that you could kick it about on the ground when you were taxiing and you could scarcely do any damage to it at all. Anyway, it drifted off to the right and I was using gentle left pedal to bring it back again, when nothing happened, it swung off the runway and finished up on its nose.
The Wingco Flying at this time was Wing Commander Billy Brown, DFC and bar. He’d been a pilot with 1 Sqn in France, and was a very nice chap. He listened to what I had to say about my crash and then explained that you could be a lot rougher on the ground with a Spitfire than you need to be in the air. He was quite nice about it, but my log book was endorsed with the note “Inexperience” against my entry for that day.